Re: It turns out, the Founding Fathers would beg to disagree.
One minor niggling point. Damn near everyone in the US with a job already pays some variant of TDI (Temporary Disability Insurance) that is a compulsory deduction from their paycheck. I suppose it would be nice if it were only 1% and I'm sure someone pays that little. More to the point, it isn't the 1% really it's another 1% and another and another.
You forgot to mention, gubbermint also requires some professions to piss in a cup or pay to join the professionals club or pay state certification fees. The point is, back then the sailors could choose to say "screw this" and go work on a farm out on the frontier which could be just as dangerous. Hospitals? Half the time, it was some politically connected oligarch running you into the ground. With the current compulsory health insurance, the only alternative a person can choose is to die, oh wait, that's illegal unless it happens naturally but the docs can always hook you up and make your body tick on so that option is out. Here I thought it was rough getting them to pull the plug under the republicasses.
Besides, why should we need more broken insurance? If they want to nationalize it, just do it and stop screwing around. It's like the bloody cigarette tax. "We won't ban them but we'll tax" the living shit out of smokers under the pretense of paying for health care. What do you mean that isn't enough? A pack of butts in NYC is over $10 on a product cost of under $1. Here's an idea, tax health care at the same rate and every little trip to the ER when Jonny has a runny nose will cover the poor schlub who has a heart attack on the metro stairs.
I could understand perhaps catastrophic health insurance for the major problems, you know, blown motor or bent chassis type of things. But, I don't see a need for insurance that covers lube jobs, tire rotations and the like and yet that is all we get to choose, I mean, will be forced to take. Let me choose my insurance, I can handle a high deductible and I'm sorry if you can't. I really only need someone to cover that kidney or some such down the road should mine go bad before the rest of me. Unfortunately the Mass. law limits deductibles and if yours is too high, you get fined even when you already have insurance. Why should I have to cough up a $15 co-pay and be limited to 30 pills each month on a $22 prescription? Thank goodness for online Mexican pharmacies. I appreciate the gubbermint's efforts but why do they have to be so god damn stupid about it? I suppose by Un^H^HNanny Sam's standards, I should feel privileged I get to wipe my own nose instead of being required to hire some certified "professional" in a white frock to do it for me.
It wouldn't bother me so much if gubbermint weren't full of incompetent half wits who sit about pondering what to screw up next and then proceed to do it.